The Malik Report

Mantha is a brilliant skater with great speed. He is a dangerous scorer with a very good shot and quick release, which he loves to use. Mantha has very good size and reach and knows how to hold on to the puck. While receiving criticism for insonsistancy, he has improved his defensive play and physicality. Once he adds some grit aggressiveness into his play, Mantha has the tools to become a solid top-six NHL forward. (Matias Strozyk, 2013)

Here is his penalty shot goal (user submitted) from today which put Canada up 2-0 against the Swiss.

Anthony’s a great kid, a hard worker and a level-headed young man. I’m happy to see him do so well and I believe that he really is going to be an NHL player. Whether he’s a 25-goal-scorer or something more, I’m not sure, but the young man is a self-improver and someone who understands that his enormous size and physical gifts are worth absolutely nothing if he doesn’t work his ass off to compete harder and be a better all-round player.

There are no guarantees,but from personal experience and having watched how far he grew over just the span between coming into the summer development camp jaw-droppingly stunned by his surroundings to someone who played a big hand in giving the Wings their first prospect tournament win because he soaked up Jeff Blashill, Spiros Anastas, Jiri Fischer, Jimmy Paek, Keith McKittrick, Pete Renzetti and Mike Babcock and Ken Holland’s words and put them to work.

He’s a phenomenally-talented 6’4,” 209-pound winger who will play ten to fifteen pounds heavier, who skates hard, goes the front of the net and stays there, loves to snipe and score and is working very, very hard to ensure that he doesn’t look like he has Johan Franzen’s level of interest in doing hard work away from the puck (pre-Franzen after he came back from his “unspecified injury” and blossomed into a fantastic player, anyway).

Because he’s a big man, he’s got that Sergei Fedorov-style, “Man, everything is so easy for him, why doesn’t he do more?” quality to him, so I get the feeling that he’s going to have to work *incredibly* hard to not leave fans wanting more, but I believe he’s committed to working to fulfill his potential, and, perhaps more importantly, Anthony Mantha is a young man worth rooting for.

He’s a mature, hardworking, enthusiastic and intelligent young man who wants to work his ass off to become a Red Wing. Those qualities, more than any level of talent or promise, are the reasons that we should all be cheering him on.

The thing you have to watch very carefully with physically huge kids in their development track is the degree to which they rely on that size to be productive, because the further they advance the less dramatic their advantage in physicality becomes.

6’4 and 209 is monstrous in the Q. In the NHL it just makes you slightly bigger than average for most defensemen, who sit at 6’1 ish and 210 anyway.

The example I always cite is Scott Parker, ex-Avs Neanderthal, who scored 30 goals in the WHL one season just because he was a monster and then scored 23 the next 375 or so games at the AHL/NHL levels.

That, and the Q remains a video game league with regards to their offensive numbers.

Hoping for the best with Mantha, of course, but there’s a long road left for him.

You’re not going to get any argument from me. The biggest thing Mantha had to deal with during the prospect tournament was the fact that being tall and lanky gave him no advantage, and he looked like what a lot of prospects who excel during the summer camp look like early on—like somebody put a 4-cylinder engine in a super-duty pickup. He’s at least had the experience of being out-muscled by smaller and stronger competition, and that’s essential.

I would love to say that he’ll jump into the NHL next year, but Martin Frk may have almost as much scoring potential as Mantha, and he’s built like a fireplug at 6’1 and about 200 pounds, but Frk still had to play in the ECHL for a while and is still trying to find his stride; Jurco’s on a similar path and he’s not exactly small.

About The Malik Report

The Malik Report is a destination for all things Red Wings-related. I offer biased, perhaps unprofessional-at-times and verbose coverage of my favorite team, their prospects and developmental affiliates. I've joined the Kukla's Korner family with five years of blogging under my belt, and I hope you'll find almost everything you need to follow your Red Wings at a place where all opinions are created equal and we're all friends, talking about hockey and the team we love to follow.